The Scourge Of The Planet
by Skyld
Summary: Behind the scenes, unbeknownst to nearly all of the world, Hojo was carrying out deeper, more sinister and daring experiments with Jenova DNA, experiments with inhuman results. (Rated R for language and possible gore)
1. Prologue

20 years before the Nibelheim incident...

The cold steel of the passage's walls served only to intensify the feeling of radiating menace that seemed to emanate from the structure as the 3rd class SOLDIER picked his way along the corridor, carefully stepping among the exposed piping that zigzagged from one part of the wall to another at seemingly random points. He could see at the far end of the tunnel was a large area whose curved walls appeared to host an array of doors surrounding a gigantic cylindrical glass tank, in which floated a large dark shape. From afar, the SOLDIER was unable to discern what it was, if he were to be frank with himself, he didn't want to know.

Despite his distaste with what the mission entailed and the reasons for his particular dispatch, his SOLDIER experience, although limited, had taught him that in an assignment of this importance, refusing to accept resulted in unemployment or worse. He knew only too how cranky his superiors could be when they didn't get their way. Hell, those hypocritical bastards should have taken the job up themselves to see what kind of situations they complacently place their "pawns" into. in fact, if it wasn't for the fact that the offered pay was quite large and that the SOLDIER had a newborn son and a wife to provide for, he wouldn't have even considered accepting this assignment. And, of course, the fact that he had no choice. He had overheard his superiors discussing the mission amongst themselves and had heard his name mentioned, along with another particular word. "Expendable".

Clearing his mind of his irritation, he continued picking his way to the end of the corridor, attempting in vain both to ignore the quiet yet unnerving sounds coming from above him and to resist looking at the hulking dark mass that was becoming larger in his vision as he moved nearer to the opening.

The room he emerged into was far more smartly decorated than the corridor he had just left - the walls, which he assumed were made of the same steel, were white, and most of the doors were made of varnished oak, save for a few bolted shut which were made of slightly blackened metal - inches thick, the SOLDIER guessed - and one which appeared to have crudely been painted blue. To the left was what he assumed to be a secretary's desk - though like the rest of the complex, it was now deserted - and the floor was decorated in a crisscross pattern of red and yellow stripes on a grey carpet. The bare section of the floor that surrounded the cylindrical tank was nearly completely covered by large pieces of dormant machinery from which wires and pipes protruded, connecting an array of meters and pumps to the shape was held inside the cylinder. The centre of the domed ceiling where the tank connected with the room's steel roof was also populated by a number of monitors and containers in which the SOLDIER could see odd, glowing substances. He then forced himself to look at the centre of the room. At the thing in the tank.

What looked like part of a gigantic black spherical shell that had been partly digested was floating, still and lifeless, in the fluid. It was connected via some sheets of fibre to something bizarrely shaped, half-covered by the shell, which the SOLDIER had to move around the cylinder clockwise to see. He then looked up, removing his visor for a clearer view. His eyes widened. There, hanging like an unholy, overgrown Christmas decoration, he could see the monstrosity in full detail.

The deformed, black-skinned torso of what appeared to have once been a human hung lifelessly in the fluid, connected to the shell by a mass of fibrous tissue that sprouted from where its left arm should have been. The thing's head slumped limply on its collarbone, and its expression was unreadable - its eye sockets were empty and its mouth hung slightly open. Its left arm connected back to its torso just below where an elbow would have been on a human. The body itself was disproportionate and shrivelled, and the lower torso where the legs would have connected on a human looked like it had been gnawed off. The hourglass shape told the SOLDIER that if it had been human, it had most probably been female before... whatever had happened to it.

_This is sick_, he nearly said aloud. _What freak would hang this up in a lobby like a fucking trophy?_

While staring at the lifeless being with a mixture of horror and curiosity, the SOLDIER had forgotten about the sounds. As he managed to tear his eyes away from the creature and looked around before starting towards the metal door on the other side of the tank, something smelled him from the air vent above.

The SOLDIER looked at the door before drawing his huge sword and stabbing it, using all his strength, into the large keyhole. The metal lock split in a loud crack with such force that he looked around in a brief panic as if frightened that he had been heard. He then pushed open the door and walked through. He found himself in a corridor not unlike the one he had entered the lobby through, though this one was slightly wider and had far fewer pipes. There were strange looking dents and what looked like slash marks on the walls, and a smoking lower half of a disembodied Slalom robot was slumped against the wall, its pink coat of paint darkened by smog. The lower portion of its left arm lay beside it, severed from the rest of the machine. The SOLDIER noticed that the pincer lay in a pool of thick black sludge. As he walked past, he touched the liquid with his boot, which some of it stuck to. He continued onwards towards the end door, which he opened the same way as he had the previous one, again checking behind himself cautiously.

This new room looked to be an abattoir of sorts. The walls were made up of surgically clean tiles, which were white and polished, save for a few small splashes of red. The metallic pang and the fresh colour told the SOLDIER that this was blood, and was fresh. The low ceiling, and floor were both made of grey stone and also had splashes of blood on them, and, the SOLDIER noted with a small jolt of fright, the top half of the Slalom lay to the left of the room in a small pool of the sludge, looking as if it had been partly digested. In the left and right corners of the wall in front of him were two large, prison cell-like cubicles , in between of which was another door. Aside from a distant scraping which the SOLDIER hoped was just another harmless background noise, the room was completely silent. He walked to the left cell, and peered in through a conveniently placed small barred window. Inside was a smaller version of the cylindrical tank in the lobby . The most noticeable difference was that this one was empty and, save for some condensed liquids which had collected at the bottom, dry. Behind it, another steel door had been wrenched off of its hinges and flung to the side to lean awkwardly against the wall of the adjoining passage to which the door would have opened previously, which seemed to curve to the right towards something in front of the room. The SOLDIER assessed the cell again, making sure he had looked past nothing, and walked over to the cell to the right. Inside, there was no tank. Instead, too bizarre to be a monster, yet too monstrous to be an alien, there was a creature, silently dangling upside-down from a bar lowered off of the ceiling.

Most of the entity appeared to be made of twisting dark green tendrils which shined with moisture. The creature had arms and hands, the latter of which appeared to simply be a split in the structure of the arm that resulted in five separate short thick tendrils forming a makeshift hand. A group of tendrils from the torso merged into one to form the creature's long neck and head, which was turned to the side. From what the SOLDIER could see, the creature, facially at least, had human features; eyes which were closed, and an open grimace which resembled a mouth. The creature hung off of the bar via a single foot of tendrils which wrapped around it. The SOLDIER assumed that the creature was either dead or asleep. He hoped it to be the former.

He walked towards the door quietly, unwilling to disturb the creature if -the SOLDIER shuddered at the possibility- it were merely hibernating. This door had no lock, and as the SOLDIER looked around for an alternative way through, something screamed.

It set him off. He turned back and ran through the corridor with the destroyed Slalom, too frightened to check if the creature had awoken or not. His first impulse was to run far, far away from the facility, but he knew that returning empty handed might be a worse idea than staying. He ran into the lobby and looked around frantically before calming slightly. What was he to do? Deciding to leave it to fate, he chanced right and took the wooden door opposite the lobby's entrance. Behind him, something silently dropped onto the floor from an open ventilation grate.

The door led him into a large, office-like room filled with blank computer screens and other dead machines, some of which looked to have been sliced into or eaten by acid. The SOLDIER, after stopping to catch a bit of breath and calm himself somewhat, examined the room around him. There were a few security cameras on the ceiling, all still and dead save for one which was silently swinging around in a state of aimless malfunction. The floor was carpeted, like the lobby. There was a thin trail of fresh blood on the floor which led to the half open steel door at the end of the room. The SOLDIER heard a quiet, dull, randomly sounding thud from somewhere in front of him. He forced himself to move onwards, stopping only when out of the corner of his eye he noticed one monitor was still working.

"INNER PERIMITER SECURITY BREACHED. ALL PERSONEL EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY"

_Old news_, he thought. The computer next to it had a message warning of a mako leak in a containment cell.

Nothing, however, warned him that he was being followed. What vaguely resembled a muscular legless humanoid had been silently stalking him through the ventilation system, using its senses to pinpoint the SOLDIER as it followed him from room to room. Now, they were on the same vertical level, and it watched from the doorway, standing on its hands, its inhuman wide-eyed stare tracking his every movement.

The SOLDIER moved quickly through the steel door at the end, which was partially on its hinges, through another steel-walled passageway, to a third room not unlike the one in which he had found the tendril creature. There were no cells in this one, but that was not the only difference.

The SOLDIER had accomplished his mission, but he would not live long enough to realise it.

A wall of bone for a face with empty, statue-like eye sockets faced him. One of the shoulders which it stood on held an arm was clearly human, save for a pair of small talon outgrowths at the elbow, yet the other another just appeared to be a thick appendage with a large orb of a green crystalline substance. Had the SOLDIER time, the smell would have told him that the substance was pure crystal mako. One leg seemed humanoid, and the other was covered in a tough-looking red sheet of skin which reached to the creatures abdomen. Its torso was muscular and scaled with dull grey plates. The creature was sitting in a kind of lotus position, surrounded by the same black sludge the man had seen part of the destroyed Slalom lying in. On its laplay a dead, bleeding human.

The SOLDIER, unable to control his voice box enough to scream, managed a lame gasp and stumbled back, only to hit the steel door-frame painfully. He felt around behind him frantically, keeping his eyes on the beast in front of him, which was slowly rising to its feet. The man found his way into the corridor, and was about to turn around to run. He found his hands against a different surface.

_Rough_ was the last thing he thought before two sharp blades impaled him, one in his abdomen, one in his upper torso, piercing his spine and tearing through his heart, causing blood to flow out onto the floor. He began to slump down as the blades withdrew, and was dead before he hit the grey stone floor.

The blades, attached to a pair of thick tentacles, withdrew themselves into a hole in the legless creature's abdomen as the stone-faced entity made its way to the newly slain, ready to compare it's relative value to that of the other dead man, and prepared to fight for the new food if deemed worthwhile. Later, the tendril-bodied creature would awaken, and make it's way to the source of the smell of blood, to scavenge on whatever pieces had been left by its half-brothers.

---

**A/N Well, there you have it. The prologue to my fanfic. Sorry this edit and chapter 1 took so long to come out. R&R... whatever that actually means.**


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The Turk office was smart, as were all other buildings in the Shinra Headquarters building. Although small, this room held several facilities - six separate desks, a computer, and a fridge as well as a small, solitary sofa in the corner which faced a small television. On one of the desks, an old-fashioned white telephone had been carelessly shoved on top of an amount of paperwork that most would never imagine a Turk would have. Currently, the person who had put the telephone there was shouting into it.

'FIRED!? Are you saying Vince's been fired?'  
'Mr Valentine has been dismissed due to incidents regarding an assignment he was given two years ago. I apologise for being unable to disclose any information. Good day.'  
'For god's sa-' Dexter was cut short by the flat tone that told him the person on the other side had hung up. He cursed, punching the phone's loudspeaker off, and stood up. He walked to the fridge and allowed himself a can of beer.

Although it was his day off, his two comrades were both out on missions, and the third one, it seemed, had been fired, without any of the other Turks being told why. _Johnson is going to be pissed off when I tell him_, Dexter thought to himself. Johnson was the current commanding officer of the Turks, and was widely known throughout the Shinra special operations department for his short temper and his rigorously disciplined attitude towards his job. The only emotion the man ever seemed to show was anger, which he showed quite often when some unknowing janitor or unimportant executive caused him inconvenience, or when he was interrupted while working on an assignment; and it was for the latter reason that Dexter didn't even dare calling him. He never drank, smoked or gambled, even during his time off - which he had very little of anyway - and had imposed as a rule that he was only referred to as either "Johnson" or "sir", although, as not even the other Turks knew whether Johnson was his first or last name, nobody had much of a choice.

Dexter secretly hoped that Bryan, his other comrade, would return first and that _he_ would have to tell Johnson about Vincent. Bryan, although a large man, was less formidable than Johnson, and nowhere near as impassive. He was currently out on a mission that involved setting up a bomb at Fort Condor to both put the resistance group at a disadvantage and terrify them. Bryan was good at this sort of thing; he was extremely skilled and knowledgeable on the subject of electronics, mechanics and explosives, and knew a lot about human psychology. Although most of his expertise was not combat-based, he was a very proficient marksman.

None of them, however, had had a shot with any gun like Vincent.

Vincent Valentine had been the youngest member of the Turks, and by far the most unprofessional and immature. He had been hired on account of his skill with a rifle after having saved Dexter from a hijacked battle helicopter by managing to kill its pilot from the ground as it flew above, spraying down a continuous storm of thick bullets from the mounted machinegun onto the surface of the Sector 3 plate. Vincent had then immediately taken Dexter, who had been hit twice in his right arm, to the nearby military infirmary where he had been working as a guard.

Dexter still had the scar from where one of the bullets had hit him in the shoulder, although most of it was obscured by a strikingly feminine tattoo of a rose. Vincent was the reason for this tattoo's existence. Dexter couldn't help laughing to himself as he recalled the memory.

It had been during their February break. While Johnson had opted to spend the day field training, Dexter, Bryan and Vincent had all decided to pay the local bar a visit, and had spent the day listening to Vincent boasting about several accomplishments he had achieved in his past job, each of which grew cornier and harder to believe as he absorbed more alcohol. Then, as Bryan lay asleep as a result of over-drinking, Vincent had proposed a dare to Dexter: they would play a game of old fashioned Midgar-style poker, the loser of which had to get a tattoo of a flower. Dexter, feeling daring in his drunken state, accepted. He lost. Still, it gave him an excuse to give his irritating younger colleague a good kicking the next day, it covered the scar, and, although Dexter didn't like to admit it to even himself, it _did_ look quite stylish.

Dexter looked down at all of the paperwork as the memory faded, and tried to recall the last time they had heard from Vincent. _There was that one time... no, that was Bryan, but then... no, that had nothing to do with Vincent... but... ah, screw it._ Dexter gave a half-yawn as he got up and was heading towards the filing cabinets when the phone rang again.

'I'll teach that fucking...' He mumbled as he picked up. 'What the fu- Oh, Bryan. Yeah, it should be where I left it. Look, just take the bloody train if it worries you that much. No, Johnson has not returned, and no, the president has _not_ left you a personal message regarding a promotion. Okay, then- no, wait. Bryan...' Dexter lowered his voice as if gossiping about something Johnson in his vicinity. 'When was the last time we heard from Vince?' There was rapid chatter on the other end. 'Wait, slow down. Will it be on file? Let me take this down.' He reached for a pen but misjudged the distance and speed and knocked down the jar and its content onto the carpet. 'Shit, Bryan, hold on a sec.' He dropped off of his chair and reached for a pen when something pink caught his eye. When he looked, there was nothing there. He paused, listening.  
'Hello?' Bryan's voice broke the silence and made Dexter jump slightly. He picked up the pen and sat back down.  
'Yeah, I'm with you. Okay, details of Vince's last phone call... Yeah... Got that... Shit, Bryan, how can you remember this stuff? Yes... Okay, got it all. What, why do I want to know this? Uh... hold on, the line's going...' Dexter imitated some static interference. 'Listen, I-can't-hear-you... We'll-have-to-discuss-this-later.' He quickly hung up.

_How the hell am I going to explain this?_ He wondered. He hit his palm against the desk, stood up and walked to the computer, looking to his right to admire the pinup girl on the calendar for a moment. He switched it on and sat down, and began to tap his fingers impatiently against the table. _Ah, here we are._ Dexter looked down at the details Bryan had given him. 'Okay, season H13... Here we are... god damn, this is big.' Dexter spoke aloud as he scrolled down the file containing the text dialogue of Vincent Valentine's last phone call. 'Okay... Nibelheim...' His eyes went down the page. 'Mansion... Experimenting... Gast goes on about some theories... What the fuck is "Jenova"?' He shook his head. 'This is some strange shit. Okay, database, database...' He fiddled with the keyboard and bought the database up. 'J-e-n-o-v-a' Finding nothing, he shook his head and pushed against the desk so his chair wheeled off onto the rug. _Shit, I have all this paperwork. No damn time to chase up on fucking science experiments._

The phone rang again.

_Shit._ Dexter jumped and had to stop himself from punching the phone. He picked up the mouthpiece and cleared his throat.  
'Turk office, how may I help you? Oh, good day sir. A letter?' He leaned back and pressed the loudspeaker button and leaned back on his chair. 'Should we have received one?'  
'Yes, and our respective employers expected a response today.' Johnson's steel voice emanated clearly from the phone's speaker. 'It's vital.'  
'Forgive me for asking, but wouldn't they have phoned?'  
'They bloody well did. They called today around nine. They said nobody responded.'  
'I've been here all day, and-'  
'I've sent co-ordinates. Pick them up on your cell and go there immediately. Important mission. Keep it confidential.'  
'Yes, sir.'  
Johnson hung up.

_Good lord, he sounded pissed off._ Dexter reached forward, shuffled through a small pile of papers, and picked out his cell; the Turk communication device. It was a small, hexagonal thing, small enough to fit inside one's suit comfortably and inconspicuously. The cells were used to transmit things like pictures to be analysed, encrypted codes to be translated, recordings to be interpreted and other pieces of mission-related information. They also acted as tracers, allowing the Turk office and their superiors to monitor the location of each Turk officer. For "security reasons", Vincent's cell had been deactivated when he accepted his most recent assignment, the one from which he never returned. Dexter switched on the small device. He quickly found the co-ordinates sent by Johnson.

He read them, looked at the screen questioningly for a few seconds, and read them again. The Turk training programme had taught Dexter how to interpret complex co-ordinates within seconds. These were clear and straightforward, yet the location they referred to was bizarre. Johnson, it seemed, was telling Dexter to go to the Sector 6 mako reactor.

As the suited man closed the office door behind him, something moved. From behind the waste bin, a small moogle raised his head and looked around.

**---**

**A/N: Yay, the first chapter. Sorry this took so long to come out. Yes, you read right, a moogle. Feel free to tell me whether I should start selling signed copies of this (don't get S-E's lawyer's on me, I'm only joking) or be tortured for eternity for writing such a horrible fanfic. In other words, R&R.**


End file.
